


Like Home

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: For @leiascully's XFWritingChallenge: ToysSeason ten angst.





	

She found him prone on the floor, supported by an elbow, pushing a locomotive up and over a bridge.  
‘Hey, I didn’t hear your car. Have you been here long?’  
She unfolded her arms and took in the sight before her. The small room next to the study, the one that could have been a nursery, was given over to a toy railway and Mulder was smiling up at her.  
‘Come and play, Scully.’ He patted the floor next to him.  
‘Mulder, we have a meeting with Skinner. We’ll be late.’  
‘But I just finished setting this up.’  
‘How long did this take?’ she said, surveying the remarkable details of the village laid out before her. Small trees and bushes, a row of small houses all joined up, a church, a school, a pond with three small ducks and dozens of pieces of track that looped, crossed, inclined and declined and all ended up at the station house with a turning track.  
He pushed himself up with a creak. ‘I’ve been planning it for weeks. That’s always the longest part. Construction doesn’t take long if you’re prepared.’  
‘Meetings with Skinner don’t take long if you’re prepared,’ she said. ‘If you hurry we can make it on time.’

It was refreshing to see Mulder animated during the meeting. His mind was back, leaping into the unknown, making connections nobody else could see. She listened to his case notes and remembered how this used to be their life – in motel rooms and jail houses and police stations. Sharing, debating, denying. He would bait her, she would bite, he would lick his wounds, she would tend to him. Now, he was having those discussions with her by appointment.  
She silenced the small, selfish part of her that railed against the thought that he might finally be okay living without her. She’d encouraged him to stay in the house. She’d told him that he needed the comfort and familiarity of it. But she knew he struggled with the emptiness, the shadows that lurked, the silence that echoed, the guilt that still raged within the walls. She did too. Her apartment was her sanctuary but she still felt she was all the wrong shapes to fit inside sometimes.

She drove him home.  
‘Do you want to stay, Scully? It’s late.’  
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said, whispering to her lap.  
‘Fine.’ His mood snapped back to dark without warning. This was what he had been like for all those years on the run, and later.  
‘Don’t, Mulder. I’m just being…’  
‘Being what? Professional? A good partner? Checking in on your patient with concerned detachment? Keeping me at arms length, being cautious?  
‘Mulder, it’s not like that. It just feels too soon.’  
‘Too soon for what? Too soon to talk again? Too soon to share dinner once in a while? Too soon to look back and appreciate what we had. Since when did what we have become ‘too soon’, Scully?’  
She blew out a breath and shook her head. ‘My being here will just complicate things.’  
He held her gaze a while before looking up to the roof of the car. ‘I’m sorry, Scully. I’m just…this is our home.’  
She nodded. Even she wouldn’t have said ‘was’.  
He rubbed his face. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’  
‘Like what?’  
‘That look you and Skinner have refined. That over-the-glasses look of concern that usually heralds some emotion-laden speech about my continuing recovery, my wellbeing.’ He held out his hands to her. ‘See, I’m shaking because of the way you’re looking at me. That’s all it takes. One look.’  
She stared at his long fingers and swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, Mulder.’  
‘And I’m sorry that every time you look at me you must be diagnosing me with some other condition that you might be able to use your science to control or cure.’  
‘No, it’s not like that.’  
‘But here’s the thing, Scully. I’ve taken the meds, I’ve done the therapy. I’ve read the books and sung like a whale and meditated and I’ve even prayed. But there is nothing that you or Skinner or anybody else can do to fix the giant hole that was ripped through my soul when…’  
She sobbed then. Loud, messy, choking. She brought her hands up to her face, her own fingers trembling now. 

His fall had been harder than hers. She had welcomed the guilt and the continual stabbing in her guts and found repentance in a new job. He had simply fallen apart, seam by seam, stitch by stitch in front of her eyes and she hadn’t done a damn thing about it. On her bad days she had wanted him to unravel. It seemed a fair trade for all the things that his choices had forced upon her life. But on most days she stood rooted to the spot and wondered if curing him would do anything at all to help him.  
His soft voice brought her back to reality. ‘Scully, Scully, Scully. Don’t cry. Please, shhh.’  
The weight of his arms around her neck, the hot breath in her ear, the tender press of his lips on her hair. She sniffed and drew herself up to face him, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m okay. Really.’ She tucked her hair behind her ears.  
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Please.’

She could see the train set even in the dark of the room – the hall light filtered through to cast a soft light against the shiny metal of their carriages, the shapes of the buildings. She imagined the chug of the engines, the smell of the furnace, the shouts of the children at the school. It was cosy. His world here was warm and uncomplicated. It was a circuit that could take him on a few wrong turns and ups and downs, but there was always a warm shelter at the end.  
‘Do you think he played with trains, Scully?’  
She shucked off her shoes and sat next to him, picking up a plastic tree and holding it to her lips. ‘Yes. And boats.’  
‘Do you think he built Lego space ships?’  
She chuffed softly. ‘And fell off his bike, scraping his knees.’  
‘And swung a baseball bat?’  
‘And ate too much ice cream in one sitting.’  
He looked up at her, eyes watering. ‘And cried in the night when he felt frightened or alone?’  
She laid her head against his shoulder. ‘I do that even now.’  
‘Me too. He’s happy though. He’s had a happy childhood. He’s learning. He’s reading. He’s spending too much time online. He’s got braces on his teeth and a few pimples and he’s grown so much so quickly that he’s all legs and arms. He’s got his eye on a girl but he’s too afraid to speak to her.’  
She laughed. ‘He didn’t get that from you.’  
‘He’s out there, Scully. That’s something to hold on to. Our son is making his way in the world. And maybe one day you and he will come back. Back home.’  
She turned into him and felt the bristle of his stubble under his chin, the bob of his Adam’s apple, the flex of his jaw. She breathed him in. Let the thoughts in her head settle.  
For a while, she let it feel like home.


End file.
